At the intersection between Ormeau Avenue and Bedford Street stands a red Aberdeen granite fountain that dates from the last century. This is the Thomas Thompson Memorial Fountain. Thomas Thompson, a navel surgeon distinguished in the Napoleonic Wars, was appalled by the conditions in Belfast during the Great Famine. Even though the failure of the potato crop did not directly affect city inhabitants, hoards of refugees from the countryside brought with them devastating epidemics of typhus, cholera, smallpox, and dysentery. Thomas Thompson was the founder of the Charitable Home for the Incurable which provided comfort for the sick. The inscription on the fountain reads, "Whosoever drinketh the water that I shall give him...shall never thirst again".